Introduction
The research for this study took place during the 2017-2018 school year in my fifth grade English language arts classroom at Southeast Elementary in Lancaster County. Southeast is a Title I elementary school. The school is currently housed in temporary buildings due to a 1,000- year flood during August of 2016 and which destroyed the original campus.
Data sources collected included: observations, interviews, teacher anecdotal notes, a teacher journal, student journals, student writing samples, curricular documents, faculty meeting memos, testing memos and documents, planning notes, teacher lesson plans, intervention lab plans, and intervention anecdotal notes. My research questions were: 1) What is the nature of a writing culture in a fifth-grade writing classroom? and 2) What are students’ perceptions of writing in a fifth grade ELA classroom?
Poststructuralism and Foucault
The lens through which I viewed my data was Foucauldian theory. Foucault (1995) questioned society’s structures and the underlying thoughts and conceptions in our society. Poststructuralism theory resonates with those attempting to understand power dynamics. In Crime and Punishment, Foucault (1980) discussed the school as an instrument of governmental and societal power. This study has looked at the area of the writing curriculum and questioned the ways in which power has influenced its implementation.
Lagemann (2000) revealed the history of teachers being disempowered in the professionalization of their own field. While teachers help to carry out many of the power dynamics of the school system, they are not the authors of this discourse. It is the decision-
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makers that are the harbingers of this power dynamic. Many of education’s decision makers are far removed from the realities of the school and the classroom.
Question 1 Theme 1. Power and Control in the Writing Culture
Lensmire (2016) reported, “Educators must look critically at what sorts of classroom communities they think are desirable and what sorts of actions they can take to create and sustain those environments” (p. 5). This is based on the assumption that teachers sustain significant control over the environment in their classroom. One of the three themes that emerged during data analysis was Power and Control in the Writing Culture. Evidence of power and control were seen in anecdotal notes from faculty meetings, faculty meeting memos, the county mandated Scope and Sequence, anecdotal notes and handouts documenting constant schedule changes for testing purposes, teacher lesson plans, evidence from faculty data meetings, Intervention lab plans, assessments, testing practice and procedure, and test preparatory handouts, documents, and meetings.
I did not make many of the daily decisions in my classroom. A review of my lesson plan documents showed that I was unable to implement many of my ideas because decisions made at the state, county, and school level overrode my personal goals as an educator. Teacher schedules were made and altered by administration and county level personnel. The number of educational minutes allotted to each core subject is determined at the state level. Funds spent at the schools are determined by the federal government through Title I, II, and III funds.
Lensmire (2016) wrote, “For workshop advocates, voice is a goal, an endpoint, a criterion with which to judge the success of the writing and instruction. Without that stamp of
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writing and teaching have failed” (p. 218). This is in direct contrast to the writing tasks required and the way student writing success is measured in Lancaster County
Writing instruction is specified in a rubric written by the State Department of Education. The County Writing Framework, Hook, Line, and Sinker (See Appendix B), was mandated by our school’s administrations. Our teacher writing resources, Writing to the Core, was chosen by administration without teacher feedback.
Teachers and educational leaders are pushed toward the Common Core as a solution for all instructional issues. Implementing the Common Core State Standards: The Role of the Elementary School Leader is a document funded by MetLife that encourages teachers to
unquestioningly accept this new curriculum. There is a constant pressure on educators to adopt and adapt to whatever new curriculum and terminology their districts adopt.
Foucauldian dynamics could be seen in the writing culture in my fifth grade English language arts classroom during the 2017-2018 school year. The writing culture was one of controlled, test preparatory writing. Writing instructional standards and the county Scope and Sequence were developed from the Common Core Standards by Lancaster County. Even this was overridden by mandates from the state determining the type of writing expected on the end of the year assessment (LEAP 360). The stringency of the writing examinations on the
standardized test caused several standards from the Scope and Sequence not to be taught to fidelity (In the order, time frame, and to the complexity level required by the county). Power dynamics were evident not only the standardized testing mandates but in the school’s handling of test preparation. Students were held to stringent standards. If they failed, they had to attend summer school. Teacher VAM (value added measure) yearly evaluations were tied directly to student writing tests scores on the LEAP 360. The stakes were high, and success was expected.
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Half of our intervention lab time that should have been used for student reading and writing remediation was consumed by mandatory standardized testing preparation. The remaining time was spent teaching students to succeed at writing test preparatory prompts.
Hall et al. (2016) surveyed and interviewed teachers about their perceptions on the Common Core and found that teacher perceptions varied from supportive to skeptical. Their research suggests that teachers’ classroom actions and interactions with students are influenced by their personal theories and beliefs about teaching and learning. Hall et al. (2016) reported that if teachers do not believe in a program or a standard, they are not likely to implement it
effectively. This resonated with some of the mandated writing curriculum changes. Curriculum changes have been associated with attempts to prepare students for
standardized testing. It is not difficult to point to the Foucauldian power dynamics in the realm of standardized testing. In public education, there is no escaping this system since it is tied to school funding. At Southeast, standardized testing was mentioned repeatedly and documented in curriculum and faculty handouts. Teacher anecdotal notes documented the reference to grades three through five as “the testing grades”.
Foucauldian dynamics can also be seen in the assigning of letter grades to schools (A through F) based solely on standardized test. Teachers are further caught in this web of power by having their VAM score tied to student performance on standardized testing. While teachers are not part of setting curricular requirements in standardized testing, this instrument measures them, although they have no power in its design.
All fifth-grade students attending public schools in Lancaster County took the LEAP 360 test near the end of the 2017-2018 school year. Curriculum documents showed that the
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of three types of writing: literary analysis, research, or narrative. These tasks were complex. Students must master a variety of skills to achieve success: writing in complete sentences, writing in complete paragraphs, reading grade level appropriate text, reading a variety of genres, annotating writing, using correct grammar and syntax, brainstorming, and understanding how to read a writing task. The county Scope and Sequence and testing documents indicated that mastery of all these skills should occur before fifth grade; frequently this is not the case. Both the school and the county indicated that writing was a weakness for students entering the fifth grade for the 2017/2018 school year.
Faculty meeting handouts and teacher anecdotal notes showed that Lancaster County adopted a “push-in” model for interventions, designed to bring students up to grade level in the areas of reading, writing, and mathematics. The purpose of intervention lab was to help students improve and raise their levels in reading and mathematics fluency to grade level. Weekly intervention plans showed that portions of intervention lab time were taken for testing practice and test preparation. My writing intervention lesson plans showed that written expression intervention consisted of practicing writing introduction and body paragraphs, annotating passages connected to writing prompts, and practice analyzing writing prompts. These lessons were tied to test preparatory writing. Of the twenty weeks set out for writing interventions, nine of them were taken for mandatory testing and LEAP 360 practice testing.
Faculty meetings typically consist of a variety of topics: positive behavior incentives, school activities, motivating staff. At Southeast, a number of faculty meetings focused on standardized testing and analyzing data to prepare for standardized testing. Instruction was planned around areas that were determined weak during the previous year’s standardized testing.
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My anecdotal notes showed that writing was considered a weakness at Southeast across the school.
Teacher lesson plans documented that classroom instructional time incorporated lessons on grammar, note taking, the writing process (brainstorming, rough drafts, editing, revising, and final drafts), and writing skills. While I intended to have daily student journaling, the stringency of the writing prompt took away time from this instructional activity.
My goals as an educator included fostering a writing culture where students enjoyed their writing and thought that their writing was valued. Unfortunately, the power dynamics in my school, the focus on standardized testing, and the schedule changes and restraints prohibited many of my goals from becoming reality.
Theme 2. Dissonance in the Writing Curriculum
The second theme apparent in my data was dissonance within the writing curriculum. Evidence of this theme was found in the county’s Scope and Sequence, lab intervention plans, handouts, and anecdotal notes, lesson plans, and the county writing framework. McCarthey, Woodard, and Kang (2013) examined the relationships between teacher beliefs about writing and their instruction. They found dissonance between teacher’s espoused beliefs and their writing and instructional practices. Teacher lesson plans and anecdotal notes showed that this was a factor in my classroom.
Vygotsky (1962) believed that instruction should be based on experiences that students have shared. This differs from the scripted, highly analytical writing required as part of the mandated writing curriculum. Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987) asserted that novice writers are knowledge tellers. Expert writers are “knowledge transformers”. Students are unable to write
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about topics about which they are knowledgeable and thus they limited to the role of knowledge tellers.
My students received their small group instruction during intervention time, an important instructional time as it was one of the times I pulled students into small groups. Of the twenty weeks on the intervention schedule, nine were taken up by mandatory testing (see Table 4.5). Data analysis showed that the remaining allocated writing time was spent teaching students to read and interpret writing prompts, to analyze their own writing, to edit their writing, to find main ideas and supporting details, and to participate in group and individual writing conferences. Mandated state testing pushed some of this small group instruction back into the classroom instructional time.
Instructional time is critical to give students a chance to become fluent in these areas. Young-Suk, Al Otaiba, Folsom, Greenwhich, and Puranin (2014) pointed to the relationship between reading and writing. Upon researching six traits of writing, they asserted that more classroom time must be given for students to become fluent readers and writers instead of focusing on an overwhelming number of standards. Again, fluency takes a back seat to students meeting test-taking requirements. The complexity of the writing tasks required students to have mastered a variety of skills to ensure success. Intervention logs showed that students needed extensive guidance to analyze the writing prompts and to determine what was required of them. Anecdotal notes and intervention plans showed that instruction in writing prompt analysis, note- taking, and writing introductions was a painstaking and length process. Interruptions in the schedule and time taken away from intervention minutes for mandated testing prevented students from making progress.
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Ottier and Mahony (2018) researched the efficacy of performance feedback for student writers. The researchers found that performance feedback did not have a strong correlation with student success. They found, however, that student task effort greatly impacted their perceptions of their writing. Their research showed that student task effort was more important than mastery experiences or feedback in student perceptions of writing. This points to the importance of student motivation and ownership in determining their success as writers and their confidence in their ability as writers. In my classroom, performance feedback did not increase the students’ confidence as writers. The dissonance within the curriculum and the students’ lack of
connection with the writing tasks seemed to limit the effectiveness of feedback.
One of the main goals of the county Scope and Sequence was having students write about a variety of topics and in a variety of formats. Lesson plan documents showed that students primarily completed research-based writing and narratives based on writing prompts and their accompanying writing tasks. Routman (1996) reported that the components of an effective literacy program include a strong literature base, a strong writing program, explicit skill bases (i.e. phonemic awareness), on-going diagnostics, and power intervention. By these standards, our writing program was not strong. It was no longer standards based and instead was based on prepping students for a test. Powerful interventions were being written, but mandated testing preparation took away time from these interventions.
So, there was dissonance within the writing curriculum. Research emphasizes allowing students time to master basic literacy skills, to write about personal experiences, to transform knowledge, and to follow the writing process. The power dynamics in the writing curriculum, hijacked by standardized testing and mandates, did not allow students the space to do this. Instead, the dissonance within the curriculum trickled down into classroom writing instruction
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and culture, sending students mixed messages about what writing was and what their writing should look like within the classroom.